Facebook has expanded the charity aspects of its platform, making it possible for users to launch personal fundraisers. These fundraisers are available across six different categories, including Education, Crisis Relief, Medical, Personal Emergency, and more. Those who use the platform to raise funds will pay about seven percent in a fee that goes toward Facebook’s various costs including vetting and … Continue reading
Sure, some people only see their cousins at family reunions ― along with other distant relatives. But for those lucky to enough to call a cousin a best friend ― myself included ― life is pretty damn great.
Having a cousin for a bestie means you have a sidekick at family events and someone to vent to when your parents or siblings are being annoying. But most importantly, you know that they’re always there for you. Below are some truths about having a cousin for a BFF:
Likely with wine in hand, ready to gossip about all the family drama. Plus, if you have to split the last slice of pumpkin pie, it may as well be with each other.
If something ridiculous happens, your cousin is the first person you reach out to on the sly.
And there’s no one else either of you would rather have at the altar when you say “I do.”
Your cousin is not afraid to call you out when you’re being moody, and you’re not scared to tell them that their hairstyle looks lame. You’re stuck with each other for life, so you might as well be honest.
And they’re not afraid to remind you of it. That includes, but is not limited to, making fun of your old school photos, poor style choices or nerdy hobbies. (Beanie Baby collecting, anyone?)
Your sister is being insufferable? Your cousin is always there to give you some sound wisdom. Their significant other is driving them bonkers? You’re there to talk it out over lunch.
It runs in the family, after all.
Because it’s their family, too, and they know how ridiculous the clan can be. It’s always helpful to have an ally when grandma asks when you’re going to start dating.
Hand-me-downs are totally okay when they come from your cousin’s closet.
Or accidentally calling you by the other one’s name. But this is more of a compliment than an annoyance.
You guys are siblings at heart and best friends for life. What’s better than that?
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Some of the world’s best contemporary photographs have been revealed.
Over the last few months, photographers from across the globe submitted 105,000 entries to the 2017 Sony World Photography Awards’ “open” competition, spanning 10 different categories including “wildlife,” “portrait” and “street photography.”
On March 28, Sony announced its 10 winners — and their work is striking.
Each winner received a Sony α7 II with lens kit and will go on to compete for the title of 2017 Sony World Photography Awards’ Open Photographer of the Year, which will be announced on April 20.
Below are the 10 winners’ photos and a few of the competition’s finalists that were too stunning not to include:
Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Mahershala Ali, Amy Poehler and a whole host of other stars are teaming up for Stand for Rights: A Benefit for the ACLU. Join us at 7 p.m. Eastern on Friday, March 31 on Facebook Live.
You can support the ACLU right away. Text POWER to 20222 to give $10 to the ACLU. The ACLU will call you to explain other actions you can take to help. Visit www.hmgf.org/t for terms. #StandForRights2017
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A California mom is making fun of celebrity parents’ photos by starring in hilarious recreations.
Kate Casey of Newport Beach is a comedian, author and podcast host. She also has four kids under the age of 7 and a wicked sense of humor about the trials of parenting.
Casey started parodying celebrities’ glamorous photo shoots and paparazzi photos several years ago. “I kept looking at pictures of celebrities in magazines and thinking how funny it would be to compare a normal mom versus a celebrity mom or a mother featured in a magazine,” she told The Huffington Post.
“For example, after Jennifer Lopez had her twins, she was featured in an InStyle Magazine photo spread wearing a ball gown holding her newborns,” she added. “After I had my newborn, I was wearing mesh underwear and lounge pants. Nicole Richie was photographed with her new son in an Oscar dress pushing an antique style stroller. Normal moms wear yoga pants and push a Snap-N-Go. New moms forget to brush their hair, let alone get spray tanned and have fake eyelashes.”
Casey posts her side-by-side photos on Instagram, where she has attracted over 10,000 followers. In her hilarious captions, she often ends with “same, right,” which has evolved into the hashtag #sameright.
The mom said she’s started getting requests from friends and fans when they come across a particularly wacky photo. She also credits her friends for helping her bring the parodies to life by lending clothes, snapping the photos, and even placing her in difficult positions.
Casey’s series is reminiscent of Australian mom and comedian Celeste Barber’s celebrity photo recreations. Though Casey says she’d been posting her photos for awhile before she saw Barber’s, she thinks the Aussie mom’s work is great. “Who doesn’t enjoy a fun photo parody?” she added.
Ultimately, Casey’s goal is to make fellow parents laugh amid of the chaos and stress of their lives.
“It’s easy to compare yourself to a glamorous celebrity,” she said. “What’s happened to my face? These kids have destroyed my once bikini ready body. I can sort of remember what it was like to have thick and glossy hair. These pictures just highlight that it’s okay to laugh at yourself and the absurdity of airbrushed and staged photos.”
Keep scrolling and visit Casey’s Instagram for more hilarious photos.
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NEW YORK, March 30 (Reuters) – The United States’ diplomatic policy on Syria for now is no longer focused on making the war-torn country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, leave power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said on Thursday, in a departure from the Obama administration’s initial and public stance on Assad’s fate.
The view of the Trump administration is also at odds with European powers, who insist Assadmust step down.
“You pick and choose your battles and when we’re looking at this, it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out,” U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told a small group of reporters.
“Do we think he’s a hindrance? Yes. Are we going to sit there and focus on getting him out? No,” she said. “What we are going to focus on is putting the pressure in there so that we can start to make a change in Syria.”
The Obama administration, in its later years, was focused on reaching a deal with Russia that would eventually see Assad go though it also shifted its focus to the fight against Islamic State militants, who captures swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
As presidential nominee, Donald Trump said defeating Islamic State was a higher priority than persuading Assad to step down.
“We can’t necessarily focus on Assad the way that the previous administration did,” said Haley, a former governor of South Carolina. “Our priority is to really look at how do we get things done, who do we need to work with to really make a difference for the people in Syria.”
On Wednesday, Haley accused Russia, Iran and the “Assad regime” of committing war crimes. She has also said that the United States supports the U.N.-led Syria peace talks, that Syria could no longer be a “safe haven for terrorists” and that it was important “we get Iran and their proxies out.”
A senior Trump administration official told Reuters Haley’s remarks reflected “a measure of just realism, accepting the facts on the ground. … Assad is never going to have sufficient force to reassert control over the whole country … Our focus is on defeating ISIS and al Qaeda and preventing Syria from being used as a terrorist safe haven.”
CONTRADICTORY MESSAGES
Syrian opposition member Farah al-Attasi said the State Department and the White House were sending contradictory messages on Syria and should start leading and not focus exclusively on fighting Islamic State.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking in Ankara on Thursday, said Assad’s longer-term status “will be decided by the Syrian people.”
Britain and France reinforced their stance on Assad earlier on Thursday.
French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters: “Assad is not and cannot be the future of his country.”
Robert Ford, who resigned in 2014 as U.S. ambassador to Syria over policy disagreements, said the U.S. government’s policy since late 2014 had been to focus more specifically on the fight against Islamic State as well al Qaeda, “even if it never acknowledged that its focus on Syria had shifted.”
“Ambassador Haley’s remarks just confirm that the Trump administration is following the same path,” said Ford, a fellow at the Middle East Institute and senior fellow at Yale.
Since the uprising that led to the six-year-long civil war in Syria, the Obama administration insisted that Assad must go.
But in mid-2014 as Washington increased support to moderate rebels to fight Assad’s regime, U.S. officials privately conceded Assad wasn’t going anywhere soon and admitted the difficulty in removing him.
By September 2015, Kerry said Assad had to go but the timing of his departure should be decided through negotiation.
(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Ankara, Tom Miles in Geneva and Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Leslie Adler and James Dalgleish)
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You can count Team USA duathlete Chris Mosier among those who aren’t pleased by North Carolina’s bathroom bill “compromise.”
The North Carolina legislature approved legislation early Thursday that would repeal House Bill 2 (or HB2) which bars transgender people from using the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity. Still, many LGBTQ rights advocates pointed out that the “compromise” bill, House Bill 142, includes new provisions that block nondiscrimination protections, effectively “doubling down” on the anti-LGBTQ efforts that HB2 enshrined.
Mosier, who became the first transgender athlete to make a U.S. national team in 2015 and appeared in ESPN’s Body Issue last year, spoke out against the new legislation on Twitter Thursday. HB142, he wrote, leaves members of the trans community at particular risk.
Later, Mosier pointed to the fact that the HB2 “compromise” had reportedly been expedited by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The NCAA had threatened to keep all of its championship games out of the Tar Heel State through at least 2022 if HB2 was not repealed by Thursday.
The NBA, which pulled its 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte, North Carolina because of HB2, has yet to make a public statement on the “compromise” ― a fact which did not go unnoticed by Mosier.
He then added:
HB2 has been, of course, an unmitigated disaster for North Carolina, with celebrities and business leaders alike speaking out against it. On Monday, the Associated Press calculated that the bill would cost the state over $3.76 billion in lost revenue over the next 12 years.
In the end, North Carolina opted not to heed Mosier’s words ― or, frankly, those of other LGBTQ rights advocates. Gov. Roy Cooper signed HB142 into law Thursday afternoon.
For more ways to combat bigotry, check out the Queer Voices newsletter.
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President Barack Obama literally dropped the mic at last year’s White House Correspondents Dinner, the final one of his administration, and comedian Larry Wilmore launched into a controversial stand-up routine before Hollywood stars and Washington heavy-hitters jetted off to the Bloomberg-Vanity Fair after-party.
This time around, the Graydon Carter won’t be partying until the wee hours. The White House Correspondents Association still hasn’t announced any entertainment for the April 29 dinner. And there won’t be a president commanding the stage.
President Donald Trump declared last month that he will not attend the event, becoming the first sitting president to skip it in more than three decades. The White House announced on Tuesday that no staffers would attend out of solidarity with the president, an unprecedented move in the dinner’s nearly century-long history.
Jeff Mason, a Reuters correspondent and the WHCA president, told The Huffington Post that the priority of this year’s dinner will be “our commitment to the First Amendment.” Mason acknowledged that theme “has been a part of every dinner, but this dinner it will be more front and center.”
The WHCA’s primary role is to advocate for press access and manage a rotating “pool” of reporters trailing the president, tasks that have become more difficult given Trump’s willingness to break with traditional press customs. The dinner has long served as a organization’s primary revenue source to pay for its executive director’s salary, journalism awards and scholarships.
Often referred to as “nerd prom,” the black-tie dinner is held amid a string of pre- and post-parties, garden lunches and bleary-eyed brunches. Cable news networks now air the dinner nationally, complete with pundit commentary and shots of celebrities on the red carpet.
The event has had plenty of detractors, given perceptions of coziness between the press and the powerful people they’re expected to hold accountable. That’s why The New York Times began sitting out the dinner a decade ago. And critics have rightly questioned the decision of news organizations to give more seats to celebrities and advertisers. As a result, some journalists who actually cover the White House are left watching the festivities on C-SPAN in the Washington Hilton bar, or, in recent years, flocking to BuzzFeed’s competing party.
Trump’s vilification of the press ― from blacklisting and making legal threats against members during the campaign, to lodging persistent attacks on “fake news” and facts alike as president ― only heightened calls to ditch the gala dinner and related soirees. The New Yorker, Time and People magazines have decided not to throw their usual Friday night pre-parties, and CNN has considered skipping the dinner.
Yet the dinner will go on, even without Trump ― after all, as Mason said, the event “is a celebration of the press” and “not a celebration of the president.”
What was already shaping up to be a rather earnest affair ― CNN announced last month that it will invite journalism students rather than celebrities ― is expected to be especially mission-driven and keeping with a renewed focus on the press’ essential role in a democracy. Although the dinner will highlight the the First Amendment, it’s likely to be more in vein of Washington Post editor Marty Baron’s new newsroom mantra (“We’re not at war, we’re at work”) than his paper’s new tagline (“Democracy Dies in Darkness.”)
Some White House reporters have said they welcome an increased emphasis on journalistic principles and a more subdued weekend. Many rank-and-file reporters didn’t get to attend the Bloomberg-Vanity Fair bash anyway.
Still, spending hours talking about the First Amendment makes for a pretty dreary Saturday night. And as George Condon, a National Journal reporter currently writing a book on the WHCA, points out, “celebrities are in the DNA of the dinner.” Vaudeville performers attended in the early years, followed by radio and early TV stars, Condon told HuffPost.
Even a president preparing the nation for war didn’t stop the festivities, as Condon has written. In March 15, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt followed singers, a Navy band and a fake newsreel with a sober speech that would generate headlines around the world. The president then returned the microphone to vaudeville star Jay Flippen, and several entertainers ― a magician, flamenco dancers, a comedian ― kept the show going.
More recently, Obama famously yukked it up with the press corps in May 2011 while his administration was preparing for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden the following night. Obama also roasted Trump that year. The businessman had recently been pushing the bogus theory that the president wasn’t born in the United States and flirting with the idea of a White House run.
Obama and his recent predecessors have turned to their speechwriters and even outside comedy writers to craft jokes at the expense of the press and other attendees. And the WHCA has booked a comedian nearly every year since the early 1980s.
As WHCA president in the early 1990s, Condon booked “Saturday Night Live” writer and performer Al Franken, who headed to Washington 14 years later as a Democratic senator from Minnesota. Condon said he considers a comedian better than a musical act given the cost ― and the likelihood that wine-swilling attendees would chat over the performance.
But that could be risky this year, as roasting a president who doesn’t have the opportunity to jab back might appear to be in bad taste.
Mason wouldn’t comment on who might take the stage at this year’s event, but said he would be “delighted” as WHCA president to see “more journalists in those tables, in those seats, than we have in previous years.”
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Luka Maksimovic is a white stallion-riding, man bun-sporting self-proclaimed Gandalf of the Balkans. He’s also second in Serbia’s leadership race, with the election just days away.
The 25-year-old university student and satirist uses the alias “Ljubisa ‘Beli’ Preletacevic,” which loosely translates to “the white one” and “defector.” His swift and unlikely emergence as a top presidential candidate has shed a comical but poignant light on the country’s long history of political corruption.
“There will be no corruption ― excluding my own, of course!” Maksimovic declared at a recent rally. “Please send all money directly to my pockets.”
Weak enforcement of anti-graft measures to address rampant, high-level corruption in Serbia has kept public trust in government institutions alarmingly low for years, according to the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International.
The above music video posted Tuesday features Maksimovic in his signature white suit.
Maksimovic claims his presidential bid began as a joke, and he was “just fooling around.” He and a group of comedians from the Belgrade area created Sarmu probo nisi as a mock political group in 2016. They won 12 seats and 20 percent of the vote in a local election, before turning their sights to the national race under pressure from fans.
Now the rising political star is laughing his way through the ranks, with growing popularity. In the few weeks since declaring his candidacy, he’s managed to slip ahead of nine of his 10 competitors in the polls ahead of the vote on Sunday.
The poster child of anti-establishment candidates, Maksimovic has driven his flamboyant “hit it hard” campaign with a string of sensational vows: “I’ll give jobs to everyone, and big pensions to everyone. I’m going to move the sea here, because we need a beach!”
Maksimovic has aligned himself with U.S. President Donald Trump, whom he called his “colleague” on social media. Like Maksimovic, Trump flourished in the political world rapidly, unexpectedly and without any experience.
He’s unlikely to take the presidency ― populist Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic is forecasted to win more than half of the vote, compared to Maksimovic’s expected 11 percent ― but polls prove his exaggerated parodical message is resonating with graft-weary Serbs. Current President Tomislav Nikolić is not seeking re-election.
“There is definitely something wrong in this country if an unreal person can turn on the crowds in such a way,” Maksimovic is reported to have said.
Lana Perić, a 23-year-old Serbian-Canadian student, says Maksimovic provides an alternative choice for people in Serbia who are “apathetic and tired” of the elite ruling class. “They believe that Serbia’s domestic politics and policies are rooted in corruption,” she told The Huffington Post. “It’s almost as if though there is a weird Trump effect occurring in Serbia.”
The political novice has rallied public support by circulating videos on social media that show him doing push-ups and slurping back raw eggs. While his fellow candidates were out on the campaign trail this week ahead of the April 2 vote, Maksimovic was artificially inseminating a cow.
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Earlier this week, Crayola announced its plan to “retire” a crayon from its classic 24-pack. Although the hue in question was not supposed to be revealed until Friday (known to coloring aficionados as National Crayon Day), the truly historic news slipped out early.
On Thursday, the world learned that the color “announcing his retirement” is … Dandelion.
For those who haven’t examined a Crayola box since pre-K, Dandelion is a yellowish crayon, not to be confused with actual “yellow,” “yellow green” or “green yellow.”
Crayola confirmed the news on Twitter, posting a strange video of an animated Mr. Dandelion traveling the world as a free man crayon. If you don’t like to imagine your box of crayons as animate beings trapped eternally in a cardboard box, you might not want to watch the clip.
Although the retired shade will no longer be produced as a crayon, it will live on in Crayola’s Color Hall of Fame. And if you aren’t quite ready to say goodbye, there is a Facebook live-stream planned for tomorrow to ceremoniously break the news.
For any skeptics thinking this whole thing is an elaborate April Fools’ Day prank, think again. “I can confirm this is NOT an April Fools’ stunt and Dandelion is the color the brand will be retiring,” a publicist assured The Huffington Post. Time to face reality, people. Dandelion is no more.
Will you be mourning crayon life sans Dandelion’s yellowy touch? Let us know your fondest memories of the waxen shade in the comments.
Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tom Hanks, Tracy Morgan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Moore, Padma Lakshmi and a whole host of other stars are teaming up for Stand for Rights: A Benefit for the ACLU. Donate now and join us at 7 p.m. Eastern on Friday, March 31 on Facebook Live. #standforrights2017
You can support the ACLU right away. Text POWER to 20222 to give $10 to the ACLU. The ACLU will call you to explain other actions you can take to help. Visit www.hmgf.org/t for terms.
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Transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner voiced her concerns on Twitter about the repeal of a controversial “bathroom law” in North Carolina.
The bill, HB2 ― which was signed into law last year ― bars people from using the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. On Thursday, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) signed legislation repealing the controversial bill. But critics, including Jenner, say it’s hardly enough.
Part of the new legislation bars North Carolina cities from passing their own nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. The bathroom prohibition would also stay in effect until 2020.
Chris Sgro, executive director of Equality NC, said the repeal only doubles down on the original discriminatory bill.
“It doesn’t do anything to better the lives of LGBT North Carolinians,” Sgro said.
Jenner, an Olympic gold medal winner and reality show star, has faced criticism for her political opinions in the past. Most notably, she has praised President Donald Trump. On Twitter, critics reminded her of her support for the president.
“I am here, since I’m on the Republican side, to help the entire Republican Party do a better job when it comes to LBGT issues,” Jenner said last year. “I have kind of positioned myself with the Republican Party to try to help these people understand.”
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